Friday, December 12, 2008

My second visit to Mission Street Food was for Ryan Farr's (Orson, Fifth Floor) guest menu. If you ever take a look at his blog, it's filled with detailed photos of how-tos, mostly involving meat. Vegans, stay away!

We got there a little before 7pm and waited about 10 minutes. When we left after 8pm, there were seriously crowds outside. Ridiculous! The menu was fun - a little beef tongue, some pork rinds, some fried-ness... not very diet-friendly, but just about everything was quite tasty. No dessert - none of us were very interested in the 2 options. Plus, the food was so heavy we probably wouldn't have been able to eat it even if we tried!

Photos (courtesy of Gigi) and details of our meal after the jump!We started off with the chicharrones, nicely fried and melt-in-your-mouth. We all pretty much agreed that the "spicy dip" didn't do it for us - tasted a little too much like Panda Express sweet and sour sauce, which really made us feel like we were eating Chinese shrimp chips. The sausage w/ the persimmon/brussel sprout salad was a bit lackluster... didn't have much flavor.

The buttermilk fried cauliflower w/ carrot aioli (not pictured) was a really great vegetarian dish. Alice thought it was too heavy, but I really liked how meaty it tasted. It was also seasoned very well. The mushroom flatbread was a table favorite, where the consensus was that the wrap was very similar to a Chinese spring onion pancake (I'm not sure how I would spell that phonetically... tsong yo bing?).

This was my first time having lengua (same with Alice and Stacy), and it was really not what I expected. The texture was a lot like normal beef, except it had a gamey/almost livery aftertaste. Not bad at all. The accompanying pork belly rice was very comfort-foody, especially with the slightly runny yolk of the fried egg tying it all together. The terrine was probably the biggest disappointment. It tasted a bit too much like the CCA's buffet of mediocre meat jellos. Was not a fan, sorry.

Overall, we had a great meal. The prices weren't as mind-boggling cheap as last time, but at $14 a person (without drinks or dessert) it ain't bad at all. Let's see what they come up with next!